After a bit of an art block period, I was able to finally sit down to creating the poster for my Critical Perspectives module. Unfortunately, I later realized that my understanding of the assignment was a bit wrong and my poster is essentially unusable besides working as an additional piece that would make for good research material, so at least not all is lost! However, it means I will have to make a new poster, but this time, I will go with a different approach and do it digitally just for the sake of saving time. I won’t lie, I’m a bit bummed I essentially wasted all of this time for it to be wrong, but, I’m quite proud of the result nonetheless.
I have yet to print it as we were not allowed on campus during Spring Break (which is another thing that contributed to my art block/laziness, for some time during the break I had the subconscious mindset of “well, I can’t finish it anyways, so what’s the point of doing anything now”, fortunately enough, I was able to overcome it and get down to work, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. A bit disappointed in myself about it but I think the rest that I got from it was much needed.) but will hopefully be able to this Monday, April 12th. I know I should probably have waited for the ability to print it before writing this post, but I think I’ll benefit more from creating a seperate post in which I would talk about the final piece as a whole. This is more a post that covers the process and whatnot. Without further ado, here are some of the images I took throughout the period of creating the illustration!
I started out by created 3 sketches – one for figuring out the composition, one for figuring out the tones and values and the last which would be the final sketch that I would be drawing onto the lino mat before beginning to carve. One thing you should know about me and planning – it simply does not work.. I had an idea of what I wanted the poster to look likee with the tonal sketch, but the final product ended up being really different. I think it was mainly because of me being intimidated by how much carving I would have to do to get it to look precisely like that. With such limited time, I thought it would be smarter to go for a more simple/rough look.
Then, I put the final sketch on a light box which was lent to me by one of my friends on the course, made a mirror sketch of it, applied a layer of graphite on the back of the mirrored sketch, transfered it over onto the lino and wala, it was time to carve.
It took me a while before I had it completed. At the very beginning, I encountered a lot of second-guessing regarding the composition, whether or not it was even worth making when I already knew that it wasn’t exactly what the task asked us to make, whether I would be able to make it in time, whether it would look good and all that. But with some help and encouraging words from those around me I was able to snap back into reality and just work instead of think about the 1000 and 1 reasons how this could go wrong. And alas, the final result:
I am very excited to print this out and see the final-final result. I think I did alright with differentiating the different surfaces as well as creating a sense of depth and a perspective which would not be too impossible. I will go over the meaning and the concepts behind the piece in the post that will follow. In that post I will include a picture of the printed version of this piece, fingers crossed everything will go well!
Robertas Tijusas 